Thanks for the link. I'll read it tomorrow over my coffee break (getting rather late now) -- Looks interesting.
That's one of the problems with these sort of high frequencies: It takes only one bad joint to cause an impedance mismatch, set up standing waves on the coax, and cause all sorts of interference problems.
Trumpy,
The F-connectors are only really used here on the coax from satellite dish to satellite receiver. All the regular UHF antenna connections are the Belling-Lee coax plugs (U.S.-style 300-ohm balanced feeders never caught on here for TV).
There were actually a lot more plug and socket connections even than my description might have led you to believe. The drop from the roof antenna had a splice in the attic on its way down to the living room. Each coax cable entered a coax socket in the corner of the room with a fly lead to the various equipments. B-L coax plugs were used to connect to the input and outputs of the distribution amplifier.
So with all that lot plus the connections at each box, the signal was actually going through no less than 13 plug/socket combinations on route from antenna to TV. With several bad joints you can see why the signal was poor, and that before you even include the attenuation through the threediplexer/combiners in the digi-box, satellite receiver, and VCR.
